Liza Featherstone wrote:
>
> Totally agree with this. This is one of the reasons why Dean's defeat in
> Iowa was depressing (despite the fact that in policy terms, the Democrats
> are pretty similar to each other). Also depressing is the new post-Iowa
> conventional wisdom that grass-roots organization, and a capacity to
> mobilize and politicize people don't actually matter in an election.
Why depressing? If the media were otherwise we would be living in a different world, and this list could be devoted to antiquarian discussions of the better minnor poets of the mid-18th century. (William Shenstone and Mary Collier perhaps.) And it's probably true that "a capacity to mobilize and politicize people [doesn't] actually matter in an election," since elections are decided by masses of people who are _not_ mobilized and who may in fact be irritated rather than impressed by those who are. When political leaders think of the "grassroots" they mean the local party machines, expert at "bringing out the vote" (i.e., the votes of the non-mobilized) but rather averse to doing so in a way that would be apt to "mobilize and politicize."
Dean's volunteers are mobilizing and politicizing _themselves_, and that may pay off in the future.
> You can
> see why elites would want to punish Dean for doing that, and make clear to
> others that it doesn't work. I'm also disturbed that the idealism and
> enthusiasm of the Dean volunteers - again, whatever one thinks of Dean - is
> consistently viewed by the media as self-indulgent, silly and totally
> irrelevant to the political process.
Again, why should be be so disturbed? Why would you expect the media should do otherwise? And of course it _is_ pretty silly in respect to the "political process" conceived in electoral terms.
> Whenever they write about a Dean phone
> bank, it sounds like they're describing the Rainbow Gathering.
What's a Rainbow Gathering?
> From: "Michael Dawson:
[clip]
> >
> > If the media were spinning Dean's demeanor as something that apathetic
> > Americans have been waiting for, Dean would have won 80 percent in Iowa.
> > Instead, he's "unelectable" and "unpresidential."
One is driven to cliche: "If wishes were horses / Beggars would ride. / If turnips were watches / I'd wear one by my side." (James Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes of England 1844) The electoral process (insofar as it involves the DP & RP) is precisely designed to keep Americans "apathetic," and to blame the media for this is to blame them for doing well what they exist to do.
Carrol